Business Stories

Amazon, founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, revolutionized e-commerce and is now one of the most influential companies in the world, with hundreds of millions of customers across the globe. In just 50 minutes, you will find out how Amazon succeeded where so many young tech companies failed and was able to emerge relatively unscathed from the burst of the... Read more

Apple, founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1976, is one of the most valuable and influential companies in the world. Thanks to iconic products like the Macintosh and the iPhone, it has won over millions of devoted fans and is instantly recognizable around the world. In just 50 minutes, you will find out how Apple made... Read more

Google, founded by Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1998, is currently the most visited website in the world. The revolutionary search engine brought order to the internet, which by the turn of millennium was growing rapidly but also becoming increasingly tricky to navigate, and the company has since branched out to offer a range of other products and services,... Read more

Groupon, founded by Andrew Mason, Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell in 2008, is an online deal marketplace that relies on word of mouth and social networking to attract users, who benefit from enormous discounts on a range of goods and services. It was created in response to the global economic crisis, and soon spread to dozens of countries around the... Read more

Spotify, which was founded in 2006 by Daniel Ek, is the world’s most popular music streaming service. Users can access its entire catalog of over 30 million songs either for free (with scheduled advertising) or on the basis of a paid monthly subscription. This so-called freemium business model is widely believed to be integral to Spotify’s success. In just 50 minutes,... Read more

TripAdvisor, which was launched in 2000 by Stephen Kaufer, is the world’s largest community for travelers. Today the site hosts over 535 million reviews about hotels, restaurants, and tourist attractions around the globe, and welcomes an average of 450 million unique visitors per month. In just 50 minutes, you will find out how TripAdvisor found success through a combination of crowdsourced content,... Read more

Wikipedia, launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, is the largest encyclopaedia in the world, with over 40 million articles in almost 300 languages and dialects. Its wiki technology makes it possible for anyone to add and edit articles, so the site is far more collaborative, democratic and responsive to change than traditional encyclopaedias. In just 50 minutes,... Read more

YouTube, which was founded in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, quickly rose to become one of the most influential sites on the internet. After relying heavily on a business model based on ad revenue for several years, the site, which was purchased by Google just two years after its creation, has recently adopted a freemium model... Read more